Parque Nacional Barra Honda

Jane and I were picked up at 7 am by Nico, Emi and their visiting friend Sophie for a drive to Barra Honda National Park to explore the caverns. The park is located past Nicoya, about 14 miles if you pass through town and keep going straight past hiway 21. It sounded like it would be a great roadtrip, and started off great, with the previous night's rain eliminating the dust. Emi got us a discount on our entrance fees because we would be writing about our experience for Voice of Nosara. Nico had his camera and Emi asked me to write the story.
Our 3.5 kilometer hike was mostly uphill and more than we had anticipated and my back was already stiff as we got out of the rental car after the bumpy ride. Jane made it most of the way up the incline but she turned back due to pain in a leg. I persevered as it started to rain, and we finally got to the mouth of the cave. The guides set up their rigging and hooked us up to safety straps as we climbed straight down about 50 feet.
It rained pretty hard on the walk back but Jane was happy and relaxed waiting in the car.

Thanksgiving

I've spent the day smoking chickens, having failed to identify a turkey beforehand. Ironically, I noticed a few frozen turkeys this morning at Rusvelt's Super, and at least now know where to get them for Christmas. I'm still using my old smoker, pictured here with Isis, waiting for Mark to finish the new machine.
I delivered a couple of chickens to Robin for her wraps, which are starting to sell well. Tonight I'll bring some chickens to the Thanksgiving dinner at Veronique's.
Yesterday Eleanor and Ryan had a nice potluck dinner and I spent some time talking to Joaquim, who has been living on the Caribbean side of CR for 12 years and had a lot of knowledge to impart about coconuts and their use in cooking. I've been having great success using coconut oil and ground up fresh coconut in vegetable sautees, but there's a lot further I can go with it. Today I asked Jason my gardener to round me up some more meaty coconuts and I'll take them to Joaquim for a lesson in making coconut milk.

The mean green smokin' machine

I smoked four chickens today after catching the chicken truck that delivers to local restaurants. Jane sold three to friends and the fourth goes to Robin, who has had some success selling the bbq chicken wraps at her cafe. Yesterday I sold an entire rack of pork ribs, more than 5 kilos or about 12 pounds worth, to Rick Walker and his Corky Carroll's surf school.
I also put the second coat of paint on the smoker today, and it's looking pretty good, with a metallic green. Saturday I saw Tony and Siggy, the Germans who raise the organic meat, and confirmed our plans for barbecuing their meat at the Saturday organic market, which will start again with a big debut on Dec. 6.

My barbecue business took a step forward today, as I ground the rust off my new smoker in Mark the Welder's shed, while he and Dave put a trailer hitch on my Pathfinder so I can haul this smoking machine around. Tomorrow I'll paint it, and found a metallic dark green that I hope will work well.
Crime has been up in Nosara lately, and I finished a story for the Voice of Nosara today about recent burglaries, as well as the decision by one of our two security companies to cut back their staff because of declining revenues. This crime wave has some old timers concerned, although there have been break-ins for some time. When the first security company opened, we had alarms installed in all three of our houses, and haven't had any problems. Some people are especially concerned because these burglars are a little bolder, and have been entering houses while people are sleeping.
The other story I wrote for VON is about the effect of the global financial crisis on our high season here, which normally gets underway in November. It's been a little slow to get going, although it's not dead by any means.
I'm still formulating a plan for rolling out the barbecue business. This week I delivered a well smoked chicken to Robin at Robin's Ice Cream shop, which is more of a cafe. I also brought bottles of my bbq sauce with the new label that Nico made for me to put in her cooler to sell.
My earlier plans to work with JP the raw foods chef fell apart, so there won't be any high profile space at the Kaya Sol cabina shared with Ashley. I may be able to sell my sauce from her refrigerator there.
My vacuum sealer remains unused, and I need to pursue some options for selling the meat at a retail location. I'll be cooking regularly at the Saturday organic market when it opens, but my best hope now will be to haul the the cooker to an unused space near the entrance to the beach and cook and sell there.

Nov. 13-Dentist and Voice of Nosara

This afternoon I worked on stories for the Voice of Nosara. I was reminded that my deadlines were approaching by the editor, Emi, the previous night at a dinner she hosted. The newspaper designer, or layout editor, based in New York City, was in Nosara for a vacation with her boyfriend and Emi planned a party to honor the occasion with a dinner for the various contributors, including me. Here's a photo of the regular contributors to VON.

Emi asked me if I would be interested in catering the dinner with my barbecue and I said of course. We worked out a deal where basically I would be reimbursed for my cost of food, not unlike my compensation package for writing articles. I'm really just happy that the publisher is willing to sink enough money into VON to make it a credible read. The crowd raved about my food, which included some new dishes, including a smoked potato salad and papaya-pineapple-coconut salsa. I also debuted the barbecue sauce label that Nico designed for me.

This afternoon I start off by interviewing the head of the water board about the enforcement of a law approved last year that will give the board some legal tools to control local development. I go on to a series of interviews about the effect of the global financial situation on the high season which is just getting underway.

It gives me the chance to catch up with Robin, who runs a restaurant and ice cream shop in the middle of the beach area who wants to feature a new bbq chicken wrap featuring my chicken. Since it will be identified as Fritz's BBQ, it will help in my 'branding'. I'll start by bringing her a smoked chicken next week so she can create her wrap, and she'll also carry my bbq sauce.
In general, the people I talk to expect some slowdown from last year's season but aren't too concerned. There has been strong year to year growth in tourism up to now, which has built a reservoir of optimism.

Today started with a two hour visit to the dentist, a beautiful young woman at Pardise Medical Center at Guiones beach. I broke a molar Saturday night eating popcorn, when I bit into an unpopped kernel. While dental work is not covered under the national health insurance program, it is much less expensive and a crown will cost hundreds, not thousands of dollars. I can generally get an appointment right away, but thank god I wasn't in pain because it took from Saturday night until Thursday to see her. In a real emergency I could have found someone sooner, but she had filled some cavities earlier and had a brand new local office so it was worth the wait.

Nov. 11-Jane's Back

Jane returned Nov. 11 and I picked her up in Liberia after doing a couple of errands on the way. I picked up my government health insurance card at the insurance office in Nicoya. It cost me $1200 for the year and entitles me to the best private hospitals in San Jose. It seemed like a great deal when someone recommended it to me and helped me apply. However, I learned from my Spanish teacher that I could get the standard policy, at a greatly reduced price, and still have the same essential coverage in the event of a major, complicated health issue such as cancer or heart attack. For those complicated and emergency issues, all the expensive equipment for diagnosis and treatment are at the government hospitals. So that fancy hotel-like private hospital would not do me any good under those circumstances. Next year I can save the extra money.

Jane arrives tired from having stayed up the night before packing. She has been away three months but is happy to be back and is finally hailing my wisdom in getting us out of Washington, although she enjoyed being there for the election of Obama. She goes to get after eating three bowls of a squash-coconut-tofu dish I made. The same dish, without the tofu but with some additional pepper, had been a big hit the previous evening at Zac and Tata's Monday night potluck.

Monday, Sept. 22-Leaving Nosara for the US

I left Nosara Sept. 22 for an extended trip to the US, to be followed by three weeks of language classes in San Jose. The time I had in San Jose allowed me to begin writing about my experiences again. I have waited until now to transfer these writings in the form of this blog. The entries are labeled by the date they occurred, and it will be easier to follow my journey if you start from the earliest date and move forward.


A young couple, Kate and Julio, are staying in our house looking after our cats Leo and Isis during late September and October while we are away. The cats have been a great source of entertainment over the past year although they like to bring small iguanas into the house for their amusement and slow torture, if I’m not quick enough to slide the screen door shut upon their approach.

Sandy, a retired vet who now lives next door, told me the cats are bringing the lizards into the house to show me they are contributing to their food supply, or something endearing like that.

Sandy and Rourke are next door in our middle house for a 12 month lease, starting last August. Rourke, in his late 40s, retired from various family and other business ventures in Canada and Florida. They had explored Guanacaste during the past summer, and found Nosara to be the most agreeable spot they found, based in part on the quality of the restaurants. I got a pretty good lease agreement from them, and considering how the economy has steadily been tanking, I’m very glad to have a year of rent locked up. They shipped down a crate full of their stuff, creating a massive storage problem for me and Janethat hasn’t yet been fully resolved. Their intention is to buy property and establish themselves full time, and it will be interesting to find out if they stick to that plan. Life here has its share of challenges, as well as the rewards, and not all of the challenges can be solved with money.

The principle case in point here has been the telephone and internet service, which have either been down, intermittent, or marginal during August and September, and problems have continued since I last checked a few days ago with Agnes. They seem to be rolling OK with it, although it has been a source of great frustration for me.

Other frustrations associated with maintaining three houses include a small mudslide that occurred behind R&S’s house during an intense rainstorm a few days before my departure to the US. There has been some erosion of the unreinforced hillside that each of the three houses is built into. It only seems to be a problem with our third house, but many cubic yards of dirt were liquefied and came flowing out from behind the house onto the deck and dangerously close to the pool. There haven’t been any further problems, in spite of continued heavy rains, and I’m hoping that we can fix the problem with some reinforcements short of building a retaining wall, which would be a huge and expensive project.

I’ll need to make a lot of digressions, since there is a gap of almost a year in my narrative.

Julio, a Tico from Monte Verde, whose lightly-accented English is due to a year he spent as a high school exchange student in Ohio, drove with me to the airport in Liberia. His girlfriend Kate teaches yoga at the spa at Harmony Hotel, where Jane will also have a position when she returns to Nosara in November after departing in August.

I didn’t know Julio and Kate that well, but other than the yoga connection through Jane they were part of a small group of us who had been gathering for a Monday night potluck dinner organized by Zac and his wife Tata. They are both acupuncturists and opened up an office in the past year. I first met Zac when I went to make an appointment for Jane, who had been feeling ill with some flu-like symptoms.

I met Zac again at Kaya Sol on a Thursday night where he was playing guitar and singing. Truth is, I didn’t recognize him at first, as a few of us were hanging out in the road smoking after his set and the light wasn’t that good. But I was impressed that he was also a musician.

Now he and his wife had organized these pot lucks, and not only was the food great, afterwards he would bring out his guitar and some of us would sing along. It’s a sweet, mellow scene that I look forward to rejoining when I return.

I arrived in Washington, and stayed with Elliot that night upon my late arrival, having picked up Jane’s BMW which she left at Dulles with the key hidden in the back seat. Jane was at a yoga conference in Denver with Joy Burch, the young yoga teacher from South Carolina, who moved to Nosara to teach yoga and work at the Nosara Yoga Institute. Jane had recently sold Joy her yoga retreat business, Inward Bound.

Jane had a rough period since returning to the States in August that involved moving our US 'stuff' from her sister Lindsey’s house in Ruxton, a suburb of Baltimore, to a friend’s house in Bethesda. She also managed to have moved some assorted furniture, as well as a few items and clothing I left behind, to a Baltimore warehouse owned by Lindsey’s son Bo. This was precipitated because Lindsey expected to lose her house due to bankruptcy that appeared unavoidable. At least as important, Jane didn’t want to be around Lindsey’s crazy energy, which has lately been spinning potentially out of control.

Elliot and his girlfriend Nannette had visited me back in late February. I was then staying in our first house Heartwaves 1, the two bedroom, since the other houses had renters, and Jane was off on her travels. I was happy to have them visit, but Elliot doesn’t care much for the beach so I wasn’t sure how they’d enjoy their stay. They took some walks on the beach, and slept in very late, and enjoyed the fresh fruit smoothies and salsas I made. Their visit overlapped with the visit of Lindsey and her contractor friend Marc for a two week visit in February. I had offered the bedroom to Marc just prior to the arrival of Elliot and Nanette.

Sept. 23-Financial Crisis Epicenter: Pigtown

My first morning back in Washington I copied some interesting salsa recipes from a book Elliot bought after his visit, which gave me some ideas for using papaya and other Costa Rican fruits. I then headed to Baltimore to meet with Marc, to see what he was doing in Pigtown, where we were involved with some properties that had been previously owned by Lindsey. This had been a big point of discussion during his visit to Nosara, and he seemed to offer the only lifeline available.

Pigtown, located near the stadiums in Baltimore, is a quasi-historic neighborhood like so many in Baltimore that had fallen on serious hard times. For surprisingly little money, Lindsey had purchased, in several chunks, two blocks worth of decrepit, small, brick rowhouses, in the frothy days of real estate. She had lofty intentions of restoring the properties and adding solar and other energy-efficient improvements, and selling them under a scheme that allowed her and the buyers to share in future appreciation. At the time, she was able to find lenders who were way too willing to finance her ambitions, and she accumulated heavy debt on her over-mortgaged home in the upscale neighborhood of Ruxton, massive credit card debt, and financing against the properties themselves. This was a highly speculative venture at best, but as real estate bubbled away, it was easy to point to other real estate development in the area and steadily climbing values as an excuse for behavior that in retrospect was clearly delusional. I viewed her as a poster child for the subprime lending bust.

(Warning: further digression) I had actually become involved in a Baltimore real estate venture myself, less than a year before Lindsey bought her initial 12 rundown rowhouses for the bargain basement price of $35,000. For $65,000, my friend Patrick and I had purchased a three story brick rowhouse on Lombard Street in a once proud neighborhood of Union Square. Once proud, but for perhaps at least since the advent of white-flight some 50 years ago, it suffered from steady decline. So much decline that Patrick had to forcibly evict some crack-head crackers so that we could begin a slow process over many weekends of cleaning the place out and preparing a plan for rehab.

Patrick talked me into this venture and needed my money. I agreed to be the banker, using my home equity credit, and we relied on his experience as a carpenter and jobber as part of our plan to fix up the place and either sell it or rent it. It seemed like a good plan at that price, because houses were being fixed up everywhere and being sold for rapidly escalating prices. We worked weekends for well over a year, as I recall, and the place was nowhere near being habitable. By the grace of God, or whatever force was working in my favor, a buyer came along and offered a great price, leaving me with about $20,000 not including a deductin for $15 per hour for my labor. The sale also occurred not long after my decision in March, 2005, to move to Costa Rica, leaving me free to focus on that transition. While not as lucrative as it would have been if we had just cleaned the place out, I viewed the event as a learning experience. Since the buyer planned to gut the building, putting our labor and money spent to waste, I had to be philosophical.

Jane and I became entangled in the latest Baltimore mess in the final build-up to our departure for Nosara. While we had shed many possessions through yard sales, Craig’s list, and other means, there remained many items that we could not, or chose not to part with. Additionally, Jane felt strongly about the need to keep a living space available in the states where we could stay, and where she could keep a desk and operate her business while in the States.

At the time it seemed like Lindsey was offering a perfect solution by offering us the use of her master bedroom at her spacious home in Ruxton. However, she soon made it clear that a big string was attached, that she needed us to buy one of her Pigtown units and provide her with a much-needed if ultimately inadequate cash infusion. She promised to pay the mortgage on a $75,000 sales price and sell us one of the more habitable units, and at this point it was too late for us to do anything but acquiesce. At about the same time we were going to our Aug. 31 closing on our DC house, we also closed on the mortgage for Pigtown.

Marc is a professional developer, and although the extent of his experience in this area is somewhat murky, he seems to know what he’s doing. I’m not sure how Lindsey found Marc, or perhaps how he found her, but he and his boss, who has the money, were interested in buying her houses. It appeared certain to me that she didn’t have any other realistic options, as she was just about out of cash and credit and at the end of her rope. I got to know Marc in Nosara, and it appeared clear to me that he was our only hope if we were to avoid taking a bath on our property or otherwise avoid a nightmare thousands of miles away.

I met with Marc at the site of our properties that Tuesday afternoon, and he had a good-sized crew busy at work restoring many of the rowhouses, even building basements in some to create more habitable space, since they were typically only about 500 square feet over two floors. He and his investor-boss had picked them up for about $40,000 apiece from Lindsey, more than she had paid but well below what would have been needed to bail her out of her situation, which also included an empty business storefront in the same neighborhood that was lacking a back wall. Her son Bo had originally partnered with her in this venture, which she called ‘The Green Pig,’ but had separated out of apparent and understandable concern for his own financial self-preservation.

Marc said his plan called for spending $40,000 to $60,000 per unit, and that with all-in costs of about $100,000 per unit they would have a positive cash flow from a monthly rent of $850 or so, which is what he said he could get from the city in subsidized low-income rentals. He said he expected it would take years for enough appreciation in the neighborhood to allow the units to be sold at a profit, but that didn’t matter to him or his boss as long as they were rented out.

My property was an end unit on one of the two rows of houses and was clearly wrapped up in his venture, for better or worse. It had been in better shape than most of the other units, and was currently occupied, albeit not by someone who was paying rent. We took a look inside, and this was actually the first time I had set eyes on my place. It didn’t look too bad, considering the neighborhood, and Marc pointed out some things related to heating and plumbing that would have to be fixed or upgraded in order to qualify for the city’s assisted rental program. He said a few thousand dollars should be enough for the necessary repairs and that he was willing to get the work done with his crew as well as find a renter while he was getting his own rentals lined up.

This obviously seemed like a great proposition, especially since I didn’t have any other good options and was concerned that this could become a real albatross. I put my faith in Marc and left it in his hands. Before leaving we talked about him visiting Nosara again, where he had some additional ideas for property development.

I drove back to DC that evening to spend the night with my friend Craig in his new apartment. He has been going though a terribly painful and contentious divorce, and I did my best to give him solace and support as he related details that were much worse than I had imagined. We sipped on Cuban rum, Habana Club, that I had brought back from the new duty-free shop at the Liberia airport.

Craig had visited me in Nosara in late January, part of a 50^th birthday celebration that included three of his oldest friends and his brother Dave. It was a great adventure, with everyone trying to surf for the first time. As can be imagined, things can get out of hand with men trying to recapture their youths. After a dinner one night at the Tropical Giardino which included many pitchers of Margueritas, I took them up to see the Black Sheep Pub, an isolated but remarkable English pub with a German-style drinking hall. It’s up a steep mountain road above the village of Nosara, and I missed the turnoff on my first attempt to find the place. There were five us in my Pathfinder, since Rob had earlier succumbed to a stomach bug, and they were all loudly wondering whether they would make it back alive from the dark wilderness. Their exclamations of mock shock grew more animated as I climbed the steep dirt road, feeding their drama with my own voicings of concern. I finally pulled into the Black Sheep, around 10 that Friday night, and the owners Joe and Helen said they had just sent the bartender home but would reopen for us. You have to see this place to understand it, it is like entering an authentic English pub, replete with antique wood bar, transported to literally the middle of nowhere. I knew they’d get a kick out of it, and of course more imbibing ensued. Another trio made it up after us, but otherwise we ‘owned’ the place, one of Craig’s favorite expressions.

I wasn’t paying attention to what was going on outside by the pool, but Dave grabbed one of the two women that had accompanied a guy, the other patrons, and fell sidelong into the pool. After they climbed out, she let him have it with a strong slap to the face. Helen said it was time for us to leave, and I didn’t need to be asked a second time. After some initial flirting that apparently turned sour, and a cocky dare to throw her in the pool, Dave just did it, it appeared. In our hurry to leave, I did a face plant on the stairs down to the driveway, ruining a pair of glasses, but my drunken angels kept me from getting hurt. The guys didn’t let me drive back, though, and managed to navigate back.

I was shocked to learn from Craig that during his divorce proceedings, his wife cited his 10-day trip to Costa Rica, a long-planned and well-deserved break, as some sort of example of his lack of responsibility. It shows that she doesn’t have a lot of strong cards in her hand.

Sept. 24-Back in the office in Washington DC

Craig dropped me off the next morning at the nearby Metro stop and I rode into Roslyn to return to my old offices at the Consumer Bankers Association. I had an unusual queasy feeling, knowing that this week would mark the end of a job that began 22 years earlier. I was certainly glad to be closing out this phase of my life, but it was not any sort of happiness that I felt inside, although there was certainly an element of relief. It truly did not seem like a very auspicious end for such a large period of my life, for a few reasons. Constant problems with my internet connection beginning in July had made my contact with CBA and the outside world in general seem rather tenuous, and it had been necessary to make trips to an internet café in Nosara at times to publish the August and September issues of the newsletter. My successor was finally hired and in place, and her efforts to assert control, as well as some minor mishaps on my end, had created some stress that pierced my Pura Vida. I really just wanted to get the last issue done and over with, and while I had a few friends in the office who would surely be glad to see me, there were others I was not so sure about.

These mixed feelings were further compounded by an ongoing slow-motion crash of the financial system that had provided my employment since 1980. I reflected on how fortunate I was that we sold our house in the Spring of 2007, and closed on the sale just as the poison of bad mortgages began its paralyzing effect in August. Had it not been for the one buyer, God bless him, it is highly likely that we would still own our house and that I would still be working at CBA, desperately trying to stay current on a combined $750,000 in mortgage and home equity debt provided by Wachovia, now the subject of speculation about its own future.

It was with this surreal background that I entered the CBA offices with my shaggy locks, greeted the few people necessary and slid into my temporary office safely tucked away from others in back. I hardly felt the conquering hero, and preferred to keep a low profile. I suspected there would be low morale, as the crisis in banking threatened the very existence of CBA, premised as it is on the type of lending that was now at the heart of the meltdown. I would have three days to do my business and see who I wanted to see, and then there would be a staff reception to bid me farewell.

Wednesday night I picked Jane up at the airport and we spent the night at her new set-up at her friend Andrea’s house. Jane had done a good job of settling in with her extensive collection of clothing and related paraphernalia into a large room that is the third floor of Andrea’s house. She said she is comfortable there and it should work out for the foreseeable future.

Sept. 25-Catching up with friends, karaoke

Thursday after work I met some buddies, Jeff, Kim and Ray, for some beers. Kim seemed to be doing fine after a few beers, with no apparent aftereffects of a rough patch he went through over the past summer, or the negative things he was dealing with when I saw him last December. Ray was about the same as ever, bending Kim’s ear and rehashing the experience they had a few years ago when they had played together in a band.

After a few beers we headed on to a karaoke joint, the Rockit Grill, we used to frequent. I signed up for my ‘go-to’ song, ‘The Weight,’ and then after that warm-up I went to a favorite that was a little more challenging, ‘Like a Rolling Stone,’ a song that made a difference back in the ‘60s when released by Bob Dylan. I hit it pretty well, no doubt aided by Sam Adams. When Jeff got his second song in we were ready to head back to his place where I would spend the night. He proudly showed me the new Paul Reed Smith guitar he bought during an extended work assignment in Denver, and plugged in and played along with a Carlos Santana CD.

I first met Jeff almost 20 years ago at a business event, but it wasn’t until a few years later when we ran into each other at a karaoke bar that our real friendship began. It wasn’t too long after that that he started playing guitar again after a long absence. Like others I would meet in the years after I started to learn to play guitar myself as a 35 year old around 1990, he had played in a band when young and set his instrument aside as families and careers took precedent. At the time he and Ray were part of a University of Michigan alumni group that played in a softball league and often went out for karaoke after the games, and I fell in with that crowd for several years, donning the yellow and blue t-shirt even though I graduated from a rival Big 10 school, Indiana University.

This was in the period after I took some guitar and vocal lessons, which I attribute to a major turning point in my life. Almost all the friends I made after that, whether they were fleeting or more permanent, were through a musical connection. Jeff is a good case in point. I don’t even think he owned a guitar when he started noodling around on one of mine many years ago, but it appeared to re-spark something deep inside him and I think it was to change his life in some significant ways, as it has mine.

It seems that all my friends and associates in Washington have been going through some significant challenges lately. This doesn’t even include Tom, one of my closest friends who killed himself a few years ago after he fucked up his life to the point that he didn’t see any other way out. Strangely, one of his last acts before a sharp downhill turn was to go on a buying binge at a guitar store, even though he didn’t know how to play. I ended up with a couple of guitars, a bass, and an amp following that disaster.

But Jeff appears to be in a good place in his life now, an exception, although he divorced his wife a couple of years ago and shares custody of their two daughters. I don’t know, my theory is there is something about the music he has brought into his life that keeps him on a steady course. Maybe I am projecting my own experience onto his.

Sept. 26-Goodbye to Career in Banking

Friday morning Jeff dropped me off at the Metro, and I returned to the office for the last time and finished a few final stories for the newsletter I wrote, edited and published for 22 years. At my parting reception, with wine and turkey rolls, I relaxed and we shared some stories about some of the misadventures of my career. I pointed to my career ‘highlight’ as the spokesman for the defense of ATM fees, a role that I pointed out no one else in the industry cared to perform. I noted the cruel irony that I am now paying large ATM fees, including an extra 2% on international transactions, and can’t follow my own advice to walk a few extra blocks to get to my own bank’s ATM and avoid the fees, because that would involve walking thousands of miles.

I left CBA for the last time, but just before leaving sang a song, acapella, that I had written for such an occasion, back while still living in the US. I didn’t sing it before the whole group, but Joe and Melissa and Steve and a couple of others were around to hear it and get a couple of laughs. It’s sung to the tune of ‘The Weight’ by The Band, my classic rock karaoke favorite.

I rode into the city, on my Harley Davidson

Hooked up with a yogi, she said you must be the one

We went riding in the country, and ended up in France

Next stop was Costa Rica, where we started making plans

(Chorus)

Take a load off Fritzi, Take his load, he’s free

Take a load off Fritzi,

And…you’ll want to live just like me

I’m going down to Nosara, Costa Rica is my game

Got a little house there, and more are on the way

Hey mister, I can tell you, how you can get a bed

Just put my name in Google, You can find me on the web

I’m going down to the beach now, got a surfboard in my hands

It’s a different kind of commute, I got an attitude transplant

Hey surfer can you tell me, what the waves are like today?

Got me a board and an old guitar, cause I sure do like to play

I went down to the crossroads, and the devil made his stand

I said, ‘Hey Lucifer,’ I got your contract in my hand

Well, Fritz, my friend, the devil said to me

You did me a favor son, and kept the bankers company

I especially liked the last verse, it rang true more and more every time I looked at it.

As I left CBA for the last time, I felt the strong imagery of the building collapsing as I shut the door behind me.

I took the Metro to Bethesda, and then walked in the rain for a few blocks to find Andrea’s house where Jane had set up a bedroom. Although it was the close of a 28 year career in banking public relations, I felt more numb than celebratory. It was to have been a night where we also belatedly celebrated our wedding anniversary, but it seemed that all we could do was find a Thai restaurant in the neighborhood before heading over to Margie and Richard’s house to watch the first Presidential debate.

Sept. 27-Life with Jane

We snuggled in bed together the next morning, and I felt especially close and emotional. It was as intimate as we had been since Jane left Nosara back in August, and she would spend the rest of the morning packing for a three week trip to Italy, while I would head off to California in a few days.

Jane and I had our ups and downs over the past three years, to say the least. She resented my unilateral decision to move to Costa Rica, and although I came to realize the depth of that feeling, I had never had second thoughts and had remained steadfast in my determination to move forward. There had been continued flare-ups, or meltdowns, and at one point during the past Spring we reached a low point and had discussed how we would divide our lots and houses. At that point it seemed we were both at a tipping point where we were prepared to go in separate directions. Then Jane was off again with her travels, not to return until late June, several days before an early July yoga-surf retreat featuring a teacher, Amy, who had come to one of the New Year’s retreats.

I picked up Jane at the airport at Liberia, and the tentativeness of our reunion reflected the wariness and fatigue that had marked our relationship during her last stay, now months past. Nevertheless, we slowly warmed up to each other, and welcomed Amy into our home when she arrived a couple of days ahead of the group, which numbered only six people although I had expected Amy to be more successful in lining up more of her own yoga students.

Things seemed to be going well up to that point, which led to some overconfidence, and the mistake of inviting the group to our house for a welcome dinner that I would prepare. As I prepared the dinner, Jane’s anxiety began to flare up, and we exchanged some tense words over the way I was preparing the salad. This didn’t happen in front of our guests, but Jane later had a rude, or perhaps just very undiplomatic exchange with one of our guests. I was cleaning up and didn’t witness it, but after everyone left she became very emotional and upset, feeling she had been extremely insulting and hadn’t been able to control the words that came from her mouth. This led to an emotional meltdown, the most intense of the many I had seen over many years, and a night of sobbing inconsolably in my arms.

I felt, or hoped, that Jane would emerge from this catharsis and emerge renewed, but after crying all night she still seemed pretty despondent the next morning. She was very insistent that I apologize to the guy over breakfast for her rude and unprofessional demeanor. I don’t think he was too concerned about it, and the Pura Vida would surely smooth over any bruised feelings anyway. Jane regained her composure and finished the week strong. She said she appreciated my emotional support, and although it took her a day or two longer to bounce back than normal, I think it has been uphill for us ever since.

Back in DC, the banking news continued to get worse each day, with the nation’s attention focused at that time on the newly proposed $700 billion bailout plan. While I was no longer a spokesman or apologist for the industry, thank God once again, I was glued to the cable channels every chance I got. It was a confluence of Congressional politics and a consumer banking meltdown of historic proportions. I kept reminding myself of my good fortune at getting out ahead of this train wreck. Yet I wondered what it would be like if I were still a part of it. I had become used to bankers being vilified, but this was beyond anything imaginable.

In a way, I felt like I was sneaking out of town, and hoping no one would notice or catch me. After all, I had been part of a political and PR machine that had helped make the current mess possible. It was the build-up of enormous consumer debt - that largely coincided with my career - that was now collapsing and bringing the world economy with it. Oh well, nothing I can do about that. I mean, it wasn’t my fault, was it?

Sept. 28-On the way to the Bay

Sunday I headed out to Chesapeake Bay after spending the morning visiting one of my oldest friends in DC, Lynn. She was very happy for me and glad to see me, although her own life had been stuck in a pretty deep rut for at least the past two years, and she was unemployed. I really wanted some of my good luck to rub off on her. I also know that her religious faith was helping her cope with her difficult circumstances, although perhaps barely. I left wishing there was something more I could do for her spiritually or psychically other than send her a good vibe.

As I approached Chesapeake Bay I stopped at the house of my brother-in-law Gus and his wife Cindy, and helped with their planning for their Christmas vacation in Nosara. They seemed to be getting along well and were excited about the two weeks they had planned for the trip with their two kids, now in college. The unsettled weather that day precluded sailing with my friends Geoff and Nancy, but I had a great dinner with them that Nancy prepared and we were joined by Jim and Ramona, part of the sailing community there that I once felt part of. The Wednesday evening race and frequent weekend visits to the Bay had once been a principle diversion from my life in the city.

Sept. 29-Sailing Chesapeake Bay

Monday morning was beautiful as was the sailing. Another sailing friend, Ted Greenfield, joined us and he later followed me to Bo’s Baltimore warehouse where I entrusted him with my Taylor guitar for his use and safekeeping. Although you wouldn’t know it because he’s certainly not the evangelical type, Ted plays in one or two church bands and is pretty committed to his church. He’s also a funny and creative media type, working enough with web and video to support a lifestyle on the Bay, so I’m happy that my Taylor is in good hands.

I met again with Marc and he gave me a mason jar of fine bootleg moonshine that he said was from North Carolina by way of some connection of his in Baltimore. Marc is very generous, and I feel I haven’t done much in reciprocation although he did stay at my house in Nosara and will again, I’m sure. I headed back to Craig’s that night for some pool and Monday night football, and left the moonshine with him. He insisted on driving me to the airport in the morning where I caught a direct flight to California.

Sept. 30-On to San Clemente California

In San Clemente I found my aunt Geneva in good spirits and not overly concerned about the stock market, now dropping hundreds of points a day while Congress considered and reconsidered the financial bailout legislation. The next day, Oct. 1, I took her to LAX where she flew to Ithaca, NY, for a friend’s daughter’s wedding and nine-day stay with her niece and my cousin Connie.

That night I made a long overdue call to my sister Gretchen in Milwaukee, and she offered to fly me to Milwaukee for the weekend on her frequent flyer miles. This was a great chance to see her after well over a year, and a good way to break up my extended stay by myself in San Clemente. I didn’t even have Geneva’s cat, Miss Kitty, for company, since she had been boarded out at a friend’s house.

Oct. 3-Side trip to Milwaukee

I enjoyed the three nights at Gretchen’s renovated farmhouse, the first time I had see it since extensive remodeling. Earlier that week my niece Anne had departed for Seattle for a temporary job working for the Obama campaign, and she called after an 18 hour day of neighborhood canvassing expressing serious doubts about her desire or ability to stick with it. I told Gretchen I thought it would be a dose of the real world that would provide a valuable experience for her that she would look back on one day. A couple of days later Annie called from an airplane on the way to a new assignment in Denver, more of a battleground state.

The photo is of me and Annie at the 100th Anniversary of Harley in Milwaukee.

Oct. 6-A good barbecue smoker

Monday was back to California and I again found myself glued to the tube with more news of panic throughout the world’s financial system. It was getting to me, as commentators were making an excellent case for years of economic turmoil that will surely slam tourism and property sales in Costa Rica. More and more, my nascent barbecue business appeared to be a vital part of my economic future. I shopped for some bbq accoutrements, the most important of which were temperature gauges for the pit I would have in November.

Since the idea for the barbecue business originated in early 2005, I had thought about how I would build a good smoker. I found plans on the internet, and although nothing seemed exactly right for my needs, I figured I could come up with something that would provide the smoking, temperature and moisture conditions that I needed to produce genuine USA style barbecue. It wasn’t too long after my arrival that I found myself at Kaya Sol, having a beer, and struck a conversation with a guy named Billy whose long beard made him look like a member of ZZ Top. He was a surfer and former biker, having belonged to a group called the Orange County Assholes, riding not far from my aunt’s home in San Clemente. The conversation soon turned to barbecue, and he told me about the great grill that his friend Mark, a welder, had made. He invited me to stop by his house in the neighboring beach community of Playa Pelada to check it out, and we would walk over to the beach and meet Mark, who hung out there at sunset drinking beer with some other locals.

This I did the next day, and indeed it was a nice grill, with a cover that closed tightly allowing it to be used like a Weber. He took me over to meet Mark, a grizzled fellow who liked cigarettes and Imperials and worked for years as a welder in the Texas oilfields, where he had made hundreds of barbecues, he said. He had one finished now and if they guy who asked for it didn’t pick it up soon I could have it, he said.

So they next day or so I headed off to his large welding shop next to the Nosara airport landing strip. It was not pretty, with some junker cars outside and assorted chaos inside, but the grill was well made. There was also a larger bbq pit he was working on, made from a discarded hot water heater with an offset firebox and a heat shield inside the chamber, designed for true slow-smoked barbecue. He showed me the features and clearly knew what he was doing. I ended up buying both machines, this being around the beginning of the year. A friend, Jacque, helped me with his Toyota Hilux pickup truck deliver them to our third house, the middle one, where we were living at the time.

But what really caught my attention, at the back of Mark’s shed, was a barbecue pit, with two cooking chambers made from old hot water heaters, and a firebox below, all mounted on a trailer with plenty of cargo area. With its double chambers, it didn’t resemble any barbecue pit I had seen before, and I had done a lot of research. Mark said he had been helping a friend, Frank, built it. The rust all over it told me that they were taking plenty of time. It still needed a lot of detail work, but it had two decent sized cooking chambers and the wheels, with suspension and shocks, indicated it would be roadworthy.

The barbecue pit that I now had was sufficient to launch a barbecue catering service. And I would be keeping my eye on the large rig, because it was a serious commercial scale machine. I had not met Frank, who would be the owner, and need to find out more about his plans.

My own barbecue business was launched on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, with my partner Tigre. My experience with Tigre, ending with his tragic death, is recounted separately in a narrative that I will eventually reweave into one complete story.

I continued to stop by Mark’s shed to admire the pit on wheels, and it was pretty clear that not a lot of work was being done on it. Mark told me that Frank, who is a carpenter, had a new baby girl and wasn’t too focused on his pit at this point. I wasn’t in any hurry to move ahead, since it was the low season and we were just doing ground work in getting the barbecue business started, working first out of the Black Sheep Pub and then moving over to La Banana. And of course, early on, there had been the episode with Tigre’s death. Toward late summer I finally felt the time was right, and I reached Frank, who has a house high above Playa Pelada. He said he would sell it for what he had into it, and would have to figure out the cost of materials and labor. He estimated it would need about five more hours of labor to complete the work, not including the paint that it needed.

A few days later we talked again and he said he would need $1800 and Mark would need to be paid for several hours more work as well. I presented him a check for $1600, in August, with the understanding that I would pay the rest upon delivery. Mark also needed to build a trailer hitch for my Nissan Pathfinder, which required buying a piece of angle iron that wasn’t available anywhere in Nosara at the time. Anyway, I didn’t want the thing before my return in November anyway, and hope we can have it together pretty soon after my return.

Oct.. 7-Visiting friends in SoCal

Tuesday I visited Dave Snedeker, his girlfriend Amy, and their new baby girl Ann at their beachfront apartment in Playa del Rey. Dave was overjoyed at fatherhood and it was an uplifting experience. His father Wally and step-mother Wanda were visiting there that week as well. As Dave ushered me up the steps, he advised me that just hours ago Wanda had learned that her older brother had killed himself.

Sitting on the deck overlooking a wide swath of sand and the ocean, enjoying a Southern Comfort, Dave and I had a chance to reminisce about his trip to Costa Rica that past winter, while his parents busied themselves making arrangements for a return the next day to family in Tennessee. I learned that while Wanda’s brother had some instability in his background, it was the failure of a recent tourist venture, caused by the collapsing economy, that put him over the edge. He had taken on debt to buy a campground in Canada, a story with foreboding overtones.

We had a nice dinner on the deck, and Dave encouraged me to expound on the nature of the credit collapse, which I was happy to do since I had been giving it much thought as of late. Dave is involved with venture capital for oil shale development and has a good understanding of finance, but the discussion was one of several that reinforced how politicized the whole mess has become. The blame game is in full force and in the early innings, and is shaped by people’s prior political persuasions. Not everyone is blaming the banks, to my surprise, and some, mainly conservative Republicans, are pointing to government policies that encouraged lending to minorities and low income people as the root of the subprime mortgage meltdown.

I explained my view that loans made as a direct result of these policies were relatively small, and that the large bulk of problem loans were not driven by these policies. However, I’m not willing to let Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac off the hook either, because they helped fuel the mortgage bubble. We missed the second Presidential debate that night, but I didn’t really miss it, having seen the first.

I spent the night there at Dave’s encouragement, and the next morning drove south in smooth comfort in Geneva’s Lexus, on my way to meet Ernie for lunch in Cardiff-by-the-Sea. After lunch we took a nice walk along the beach on the warm and sunny afternoon. Ernie and his real estate partner Pamela were fortunate to have sold their double lot in Nosara located near our houses in the K section earlier in the year, but he said the mood in California was pretty grim these days. However, he has been enjoying his life and getting in plenty of golf, now typically at discounted rates due to the economy. Ernie’s natural smile didn’t seem phased and he said he still has cash on hand waiting for the right real estate opportunity in the San Diego-Oceanside area. Concerns about a recent dent in his cash account were salved by a surfing session that morning. As I bid farewell, not expecting to see him in Nosara for some time, he gave me a recent CD of an Abraham-Hicks talk. I listened to it in the car later, a rumination on the Law of Attraction as expounded by the channeled spirit who calls himself Abraham. It fit right in with some other CDs I had been listening to called “Infinite Possibilities – The Art of Living Your Dreams’ by Mike Dooley. As summarized by Dooley, thoughts become things.

I have been giving a lot of consideration to the law of attraction lately, since it seems so relevant to the way my life has been unfolding over the years, and especially as it has led me to my new life in Nosara.

Oct. 11 A recap of Jane and Geneva

I picked Geneva up at LAX on Thursday and on Friday we were joined by our distant German relatives, Frank and Inge, who were in Los Angeles visiting their daughter Taina and her husband Miguel, helping out between nanny gigs for their latest son Mateo, a midget version of his three year old brother Miko. On Saturday Taina and Miguel, along with my cousin Katya drove down to join us for dinner.

The last time I saw Katya was last Thanksgiving at Geneva’s, the occasion of Jane’s emotional meltdown which caused a major rift in the relations between her and my aunt, and by extension me. It was that Thanksgiving evening that Jane, unsolicited, started complaining about her hardships with her new life, including the short gap in October in medical insurance coverage that she viewed as a significant crisis. The next morning after a cordial beginning, things went rapidly downhill. Geneva let Jane know that in her opinion Jane was not much more than a spoiled brat living off my check book and with a tenuous grip on her mental wellness. The two got into it like pit bulls with me in the middle, not wanting to alienate either one. The two finally separated and later I took Jane to the airport where she departed earlier than planned for a visit with a friend in Arizona. I spent a few more scheduled days with Geneva and we mostly avoided discussing the fight. A few weeks later in Nosara I received an email from Geneva telling me that she longer wanted me to be the executor of her estate, based on her concern that I was too dominated by Jane.

Following that debacle, Geneva asked me to housesit for her for about 12 days in April while she took a river cruise in Europe. I happily obliged, wanting to get our relationship back on track, although spending the time alone in her house, with its sweeping view of the Pacific, left me feeling detached, with a sense of ennui and perhaps a bit of depression. Things had really been cooking in Nosara, literally, as the barbecue business was enjoying its early success with Tigre in the waning days of the high season.

Taina and Miguel, with Miko, visited for a week in Nosara last March, staying at the two bedroom house, and were there for our St. Patrick’s day barbecue debut at the Black Sheep Pub. Miguel thinks he met just about everybody there that night in his attempt to locate the owner of a van that had blocked their rental car, and I’m sure he did because he has that natural gregariousness of a politician. They asked about the business and were saddened to hear about Tigre’s death.

That night I returned to LAX to catch a red-eye to San Jose, where I would spend three weeks in Spanish language school, Epifania.

Oct. 12-Arrive in San Jose, meet my homestay family

I arrived on schedule and my ride was there to take me to my homestay family. I was given my choice of two rooms, simple but reasonably spacious, and foggy from the redeye picked the right one to settle into. I took a nap and at some point met Andres, the twenty-something son of the woman who ran the house. He spoke great English, and I was invited to join them to see a movie. We trouped out, Andres with his girlfriend, another brother Mauricio, and sister, Andreas, and mother Yolanda. The mall, Terramall, was quite similar to US malls with a lot of designer shops like Tommy Hilfiger and the same brands you would see in Washington. Likewise the multi-plex theaters were similar. Andres had some sort of coupons for the tickets and said I didn’t need to pay. We saw a violent American movie, ‘The Taken,’ about an ex-CIA agent rescuing his daughter who has been kidnapped by the Bulgarian mob who is selling her into white slavery. It was a violent, action-packed movie, and as I reflect back on it, righting this much later, I can’t help think about all the violence and death the CIA has inflicted on Latin America in carrying out the US mission to defend capitalism, no matter how correct, against communism and socialism. Costa Rica abolished its army in 1947, although it cooperated with the CIA as agents used Costa Rica as a base for operations in support of the Contras in the Nicaraguan civil war. The CIA built the airport that is now the Oduber International Airport in Liberia, which opened the region that includes Nosara to development. The availability of the airport at Liberia (LIR) was one of many pieces paving the way for our relocation to Nosara. So I suppose I owe that to the CIA, but still, they are killers that have subverted Democracy in so many Latin American countries. I guess our goal of creating democracy in Iraq is an effort to make up for that. Right.

Oct.14 Epifania language school

I finished my second day of Spanish language classes today in San Pedro, a suburb of San Jose. I’m taking two classes in the morning, a total of four hours, and it leaves me free afternoons and evenings. It is giving me a chance to catch up on my writing, which I never had time for on my recent stay in the US.

Having completed my first year in Costa Rica, I feel I am deep into my new life and that it is going well. While I felt some anxiety during my stay in the U.S., it was a feeling that I don’t have here now, at my home-stay in San Pedro, even though I am in totally new surroundings in an unfamiliar neighborhood with no one that I have known for more than three days.

The classes have been good, and I’m making rapid progress with no more than one or two other classmates at a time. The first day, my classmate, Woody, a Canadian, started talking about the Law of Attraction, or Ley de Attracion, part of The Secret or El Secreto, and related it to how he had come to move down to Costa Rica. The teacher and school founder, Gisella, was animated by this discussion as well and I was also able to relate how I felt that moving to Nosara was no accident. I thought that conversation, in Spanish, was very encouraging for my first day.

Oct. 15 Time for Reading & Law of Attraction

Since afternoons and evenings are free, I have had plenty of time and some concern about the risk of boredom or ennui. So far, as I write this after one week, that has not been the case. The home-stay family has been very friendly, Yolanda and her sons Andres and Aron and daughter Andrea. Andres speaks great English, although after Sunday we have avoided using it, and works for a shipping company. Aron is not around as much but Andres said he is a nurse and I understand he is continuing some sort of medical studies. Andrea helps around the house, and has been especially helpful since her mother broke a bone in two places in her lower leg Tuesday night, which required a few days stay in the hospital while they pinned the bone back together. She’s a sweet lady and a good embodiment of the love that holds Tico families together and makes Costa Rica a great country.

In browsing through a couple of shelves of books near their television I picked out a paperback titled “Revolution Against War,” by D. Park Teter, since I knew I would have plenty of time and had only brought with me “A History of God” and a collection of American Indian literature, “Song of the Turtle,” given to me by my Nosara friend Helder.

A reference to hidden creative power on the back cover was enough to get me started and it turns out the book’s theme fits right in with the law of attraction, although published in 1990 and based on the author’s own discovery and research process following a highly unusual event of ‘coincidence’ in his life

Well, I just restarted my computer after a blue screen crash, and lost the last couple of paragraphs I wrote about Teter’s book and theory. According to his view, there are no accidents or coincidences, but rather so-called reality is a projection of a ‘dream’ dreamed by the collective public that also has specific personal meaning for each individual. I’m not sure what meaning I should place in my computer crash and the loss of my initial description of his thesis, but perhaps, according to his idea, the universe is telling me not to place too much meaning in it. Of course, that interpretation would validate his point. Perhaps it was just a simple computer crash because Microsoft’s Vista operating system is a piece of shit.

I have also been listening to a series of CD lectures called “Infinite Possibilities, The Art of Living Your Dreams,” by a former accountant named Mike Dooley, who also lectures and has a website, www.tut.com based on ‘Totally Unique Thoughts.” His fundamental premise is that ‘thoughts become things,’ which he expounds upon for 12 hours. Like Teter and Abraham-Hicks, this is another takeoff on the law of attraction, and Dooley cites the channeled information from a spirit called Seth, as recorded in a book by the same name, as the source for much of his information.

The reader of this journal may or may not be disposed toward such thinking, and many would even find this sort of thinking delusional. But I feel like there have been too many fortunate breaks and coincidences in my life to ignore material such as this, because these theories describe my life and how it has unfolded, to a large extent. I would also point to books by Wayne Dyer or Deepak Chopra as sources of related information and views, and these are bestsellers so there are many people of similar minds.

Last Monday, after my first conversational Spanish class turned into a discussion about the law of attraction, with the three of us all testifying, in Spanish, about our own experiences that seem to validate this law, I went to check my email on one of the school’s computers available for students. There was an email Jane had forwarded with a ‘thought of the day’ from the tut.com website. I was from ‘The Universe’ and read:

“Ever wonder what would make life's fleeting pain and sorrow totally and unquestionably "worth it," jane? How about living forever, wildly in love and loved wildly? Yeah, baby

“Thoughts become things... choose the good ones!”

I responded that I have been listening to the CDs from this same guy, Mike Dooley, which I found among her miscellaneous CD collection on a shelf in our bodega, or storage room, in Nosara. She replied later that she wasn’t aware of the CDs, but had been turned on to the guy by a couple of pals at the yoga retreat she was attending at the time in Italy. That’s a little coincidence, but it’s the type that has been occurring multiple times per week, especially as it relates to Costa Rica. If I’m delusional, I’m happy in my delusions in Nosara, while it seems most everyone I know back in the US is experiencing various forms of misery.

Oct. 17 - My musician pals

Friday afternoon I visited a friend, Andres, whom I met in Nosara and is living temporarily with his mother in the San Jose suburb of La Uruca. He’s a musician friend of Juan, an Argentine guitarist and performer who has become a close friend and whom I have been spending a lot of time with in Nosara.

I’ll digress here. I first met Juan last April, when Tigre invited me come with him to an open mike at Marlin Bill’s restaurant, where Juan was playing. We brought djembes to play along and there I also met a fellow, Darrin, who I later placed as the current principal singer with the Medicine Show, the local band rooted by Bill Macpherson on bass. The three of us played djembes as Juan played electric guitar and sang in his distinctive, throaty voice. With little experience playing percussion, and none in public, I sat a little further back and did my best to follow the rhythms and patterns of the other two. There were no more than three or four diners, so it was pretty low key but nevertheless a great time and one of those experiences that made me think, ‘this is what I came to Nosara for, part of my dream.’ This is a very exciting feeling, to feel a dream is being verified.

I was with Juan and Tigre the night of Tigre’s death, and received the phone call from Juan at 7 am the next day, May 15, and we became close friends during that period and after. The immediate days after Tigre’s death were emotionally charged, as my house became the central meeting place for friends and acquaintances to meet and share their grief.

Juan said that my faith in him and appreciation of his music gave him confidence, or something like that, and whatever it was made him especially appreciative of our friendship. I helped him do some recordings of his music using his equipment and mixer and my Apple Mac and its Garage Band program, which is surprisingly sophisticated with its features. I also set up a free website for him at MySpace, which has a section for musicians and bands that want to show off their work. It’s a work in progress, but you can see it at www.myspace.com/juanperegrino

Juan met Andres in San Jose, but Andres was working as a tour guide in Guanacaste when he came down to Nosara, via bus and hitchhiking, to join Juan for some gigs in the area. Andres played bass and they were joined by a local drummer, Jon Jon, who normally played with the Medicine Show. With not much practice, the three of them sounded pretty good together and were capable of doing some great jamming.

Their initial gig was at La Banana, the bar where Ryan and I had been serving our barbecue one or two nights a week. One of the things I like about Juan is that he is a great promoter, and he’ll pass out our homemade handbills on the beach and to anyone he sees around Guiones, and in our small community it’s not that hard to get the word out about what’s happening. While there haven’t been that many people around during our low season, he’s managed to draw some respectful audiences and my barbecue sales have benefited on the occasions that we have both worked the same venue.

Andres is a young Tico, 24 I believe, whose manic behavior ensured that evenings with him around were likely to be animated.

The new trio had Friday and Saturday night gigs in the neighboring beach town of Samara, significantly larger than Nosara and which still had a modest but fair-sized crowd available in early September. I accompanied them on their Friday night gig at Coco’s restaurant, riding along in Juan’s old GM van, which he slowly negotiated through about 12 miles of really bad dirt road with broken power steering.

After the show we sat around having some beers with Coco, and as Andres was intensely flirting with Juan’s sister-in-law Sylvia, he offended Coco with his lack of deference to him.

A few days later I learned from Juan that after there gig Saturday night, at another club in Carillo just past Samara, Andres had some sort of mental breakup and literally went crazy. Sylvia was there and it wasn’t pretty. Wow, I thought, life in the jungle can be strange.

So when I got an email from Andres, I was a bit wary. I let him know that I was in San Pedro at language school and he said he was staying at his mother’s house following some treatment related to his behavior. He sounded lonely and bit remorseful so we chatted on the phone and I agreed to visit him. I got instructions for a couple of bus connections and we had a nice reunion. He talked openly about his condition, which he said was a type 1 bipolar disorder, along with some other condition that is shared by some artists and can contribute to their creative process. He said he spent some time in a psychiatric hospital, under physical restraints at one point that coincided with his birthday, and takes medication to keep his condition under control. He told me he had been seeing a therapist who was using some alternative approaches to drugs, and has been advised that he will be walking a ‘tightrope’ and can’t drink alcohol, smoke pot, or even fall in love with a girl for fear of setting off another episode. His attraction to Sylvia, along with fatigue from little sleep and the aforementioned stimulants were all factors leading up to his breakdown.

Andres picked up his acoustic guitar and played a few of his original songs, one about love and another about the rejection of love, and his old dog shook his hindquarters, as if dancing to the music.

His dream is to be a working musician, and to pursued his ambitions in other countries where he believes there is more support for it than in Costa Rica.

Oct. 19 Dreaming

I signed up for extra weekend classes, and this morning, Sunday, with Giselle, I mentioned my attempt to remember my dream, or sueno, as I woke up. I’ve been thinking of dreams lately, but I always seem to forget them as soon as I wake up and the fragments that I sometimes hold onto for a short time don’t strike me as especially interesting or worth remembering. Giselle said she had studied psychology while in college including the work of Freud and Jung as it related to dreams. She suggested that before going to sleep, I remind myself to try to remember my dreams, and then to have a notebook to take down any information I remember in the morning. She said that if I did this I would start to notice things happening during the day that related to my dream information and that I would find this very interesting. Well, I need to give it a try.

Oct. 20 Dreaming some more

I made a focused effort before falling asleep to member as much as possible about my dreams that night, and kept a notepad by bed. I did remember fragments of several dreams, including some segments with my friend Craig. It seems we were attempting to make a business strip together. My clearest imagine of him is as a sharply dressed executive giving speech to a luncheon club of other executives. His professional attire and demeanor tell me he is at the top of his game, which I interpret positively because he has had the toughest challenges of his life lately and is still holding it together.

Oct. 22-Robbed at knifepoint in San Jose

As an alternative to class this morning there was a tour of San Jose, and I wanted to become more familiar with this city. A Japanese student, Tomoka, and a woman from the Bahamas, Tootsie, opted for the tour and off we went with Jose from the school. As it happened, a television reporter and cameraman from Canal 6 joined us and a report aired the next morning. I missed it, but Yolanda, the proprietress of my homestay casa, saw me and called out but it was over before I got downstairs. I’m not sure about the story angle but some city officials took the tour and I was told their purpose was to take a look and make sure things were tidy in the city. Seeing the tv crew, I couldn’t help but thinking of the many times I had appeared before the camera to answer questions about banking. I considered the possibilities that cameras might be attracted to me. Oddly, doing the tv interviews was one of the few things that I enjoyed about my past career. I’d always considered it an ego thing, but it was also part of the measure of success for someone who is typically identified as an industry spokesman. I half way expected the journalista to turn to me with her microphone and ask me a question, in Spanish of course, about how I thought the financial crisis would affect the economy of Costa Rica. I even thought how I would get a copy of the segment and send it back to the US, perhaps to my old boss Joe. Well, needless to say, not all thoughts become things. Perhaps because I didn’t want it hard

enough.

Later I got a call from Andres and he was planning to be at a bar called Observatorio for some live music that night, and wanted me to join him, although our plans to meet for some music the previous evening had disconnected. Andres is also the name of one of Yolanda’s sons, and I reviewed the location of the bar with him and waited until a little after 9 before heading out. My homestay house is in the third block off of the main street that goes through San Pedro, and is in a decent middle class area with enough traffic to be annoying during the rush hours. The night was cool following late afternoon thundershowers and it was no more than a couple of hundred yards to the main road where I could either take the bus or catch one of the plentiful and cheap taxis, which is what Andres suggested. I was a little wary of taxis, only because the previous morning, one of my fellow students, an older American woman, had arrived visibly shaken as a result of a taxi driver who had taken her on a circuitous route in spite of her feeble protests in bad Spanish. I already knew the bus route and my destination was pretty much a straight shot.

As I was half way to the main road, walking alongside a playing field in an area that could hardly be considered deserted, I was jostled by one of two young men walking toward me on the sidewalk. I initially considered it an act of overt rudeness, but quickly a knife was shown and I backed away, putting up my hands, indicating nonverbally that I would cooperate and give them what they wanted. The taller one, with the knife, was clearly loco and I recognized the word gringo as he seemed to have some soft of vendetta against people like me. The other one kept repeating tranquillo, and I wasn’t sure if he was trying to get his buddy to calm down or if he was trying to tell me to calm down. We did a little dance, it seemed, but I just wanted to throw them my wallet. I had emptied it of everything but about $50 worth of Colones and one piece of plastic, my debit card for my Banco National account.

I wouldn’t call it a premonition, but as a matter of simple precaution in a city with a lot of crime I had removed the plastic from my wallet, including my Washington DC driver’s license, leaving only a photocopy of my passport. But rather than waiting for me to hand over the wallet, one of the ladrones felt the need to hold the knife to my throat, while the other one personally removed my wallet. The shorter one then also slapped my front pocket, where I felt sure he would relieve me of my cell phone and the digital camera I had just purchased the day before.

Having secured my billetera, they left me unscathed and continued to walk, not run, down the street. My cell phone began to ring, and I reached into my pocket with relief that it was there. It was Andres, wondering where I was. Robo, I said, using the Spanish word for emphasis. I would not be seeing him tonight, and he said he was very sorry. I was happy to discover that my camera was still in my pocket, and I looked down the street in the direction of mi casa. I had spoken to Andres for less than a minute, but before I had moved, a police car showed up. I yelled ladrones and pointed excitedly down the road. I watched as the car headed in the direction of the thieves, and it appeared that there was something else happening in the block past my homestay.

I walked back in that direction, stopping at my house and ringing the buzzer next to the locked gate that abutted the sidewalk, rather than using my key to gain entrance. Yolanda’s daughter Andreas appeared at the door and I said, Robo, necessito Andre. When Andre appeared, I told him I was robbed and I think they captured the ladrones down the street.

He joined me for a walk less than half a block further down, where four policemen in two vehicles had two young men sitting down on the sidewalk. I looked at them in the spotlight of one of the police cars, and aside from being amazed at the speed at which everything had unfolded, had some concern about my ability to positively identify the scumbags who robbed me. Not only had the light been limited, but the presence of a knife at your throat and the resultant adrenaline can blur your memory. Not to mention that even in my younger days I was never that great with faces. Now the two were sitting quietly on the sidewalk, in a different context as well.

One of the policemen was going through the contents of a bag that had been taken from the perps, showing me some items that included a Michigan drivers license that clearly belonged to another hapless female victim. Meanwhile, another policeman looked along the street for anything that might have been discarded or tossed away, possibly as the police approached.

At around this point, the policia had ordered the taller perp to stand up against the wall that ran parallel to the sidewalk, in this hilly neighborhood. I’m not sure why, but if they were just getting around to frisking him, it seems like it was a bit slow in the process. I approached from the side and put my face as close to his as prudence allowed. As he looked toward me the crazed expression started to return, and I stabbed my finger in the direction of his face. This provoked him further, like a wild animal, which confirmed without any further doubt in my mind that this was the loco ladrone who had earlier wielded the knife. I may not be great with a face, but there was no mistaking that crazed look.

Within minutes my wallet was found, with the cash but not the debit card or the assortment of business cards and miscellaneous papers. They also found the knife, and then my watch, which had been torn from my wrist. Until I saw the watch, I hadn’t remembered them taking it. Such is the adrenaline. Actually, I was feeling pretty calm. I never panicked or really lost my composure at any point.

Thank God that Andre was there with me to translate. We went with the police in one car, a tiny econo-model, while they took the suspects in the other vehicle, a double-cab pickup, to the station and temporary detention center. The police took my preliminary statement, a rather slow process, and Andre was on the phone with Banco National to have my debit card cancelled. I gave him the name of the company my account was registered with, F.J. Nosarico, and we repeated the spelling a few times while they tried to pull up the account. I gave them my name, which they also had somewhere in their records, as well as the mailing address that they had on file to send me monthly statements. This went on for ten minutes at least, and finally Andre hung up with the assurance that they would continue to attempt to locate my account. As soon as he hung up, he got a call, or perhaps returned a call, to his house, where someone there had found my card on the street. Another resident of the house, Hector, had returned to the house sometime after the robbery and noticed papers and my card laying in the street or sidewalk near the house. So fortunately, my card had not been cancelled and Andre called the bank back to say, ‘Never mind.’ I was glad to be able to avoid the timely process of obtaining a new debit card, since the concepts of ‘convenience’ and ‘banking’ with one of the state-owned banks in Costa Rica are not closely related.

For many years I have carried in my wallet a small piece of paper that I received during my initiation to the first level of Reiki, a form of spiritual healing. It is titled ‘Protection Method,’ with the subheading ‘OM’. It reads:

I am the universe, I am

I am the sphere, I am

I am the light, I am

I am the flame, I am

I am the sword, I am

I am the reflection, I am

I am the Universe, I am

This piece of paper was among the items from my wallet awaiting our return home. But first, the police took us to a judicial center, where after some time waiting I gave my detailed statement to some officials, again receiving priceless assistance in translation from Andre. We got back before midnight, and I took one of the sleeping tablets I had purchased the day before because my extended afternoon siestas had been causing some problems falling asleep at night.